Kyle Nabilcy
I was standing in my kitchen, getting the chips and queso dip ready, looking at the jar of orange goo I was about to enjoy, and a thought hit me: the mango milkshake IPAs! If there’s a day to open three beers at once and judge them competitively against each other, is Super Bowl Sunday not that day? I mean, what other day would do?
Consider this the payoff to the well-known literary concept of Chekhov’s Column Idea. Any column subject mentioned in January must be written about by February.
As I mentioned last month, there were three contenders in my fridge, two from early January and a third from mid-December:
In this corner, from Baltimore, more or less (Oliver Brewing and gypsy brewer Stillwater Artisanal Ales): Whipped Volume 2, a double IPA with mango, vanilla, and lactose in a nitrogenated can.
In the next corner, from Eau Claire, Wisconsin: The Brewing Projekt’s Resist Mango Smoothie Milkshake IPA, with the same list of added ingredients but with regular carbonation.
And in the third corner of this atypically-triangular ring, from Waunakee, Wisconsin, with a splash of Decorah, Iowa: Untitled Art’s Mango Milkshake IPA.
You may have heard or read me assert that Untitled Art and The Brewing Projekt were my Wisconsin breweries of 2017, and both the Untitled Art and the mango-less version of Resist have already gotten praise from my colleague Robin Shepard. Are we just being homers, though? Is our love for our home state’s brewers clouding (hazing?) our objective appreciation for their virtues?
Cracking the three cans, I uncovered three very different liquid experiences. Mango Milkshake has the prettiest look, brightly orange and opaque as a low-hanging spring fog. Mango Smoothie Resist, on the other hand, is frankly kind of ugly. A little muddy and rust-colored, there’s no cloudy haze to it.
Whipped’s can actually instructs you to shake it before opening, which is very, very strange. My brain’s motor controls fought me with every gentle oscillation. Prior experience with nitro cans told me to open fast and pour quickly, and even though it spit at me a little as the seal was broken, Whipped opened more or less clean and poured true to its nitro roots. The cascade was quite pretty, and the resulting head was tight and creamy. Orange aroma dominates at first sniff.
Here’s the thing with nitrogenation: I’m not sure I can think of a beer made better by the nitro effect. Different? Absolutely, and with occasionally equal success. But I don’t know if nitro makes any beer experience fundamentally better. Not for me, anyway. And Whipped definitely loses something under its puddingy blanket of foam. It’s harder for the tongue to discern the brighter fruit and hop flavors when there’s no traditional carbonation to lift it off your taste buds. They just languish on the palate. (I feel the same about hoppy beers given the cask ale treatment. Give me carbonation or give me death.)
Even as the oldest can of the three, the sudsy-headed Untitled Art still maintains a hop presence over its competitors. The mango flavor is there, too, but it has developed into a generally juicy profile with an undercurrent of sweet. True mangosity arrives from that ugly duckling, the Mango Smoothie Resist. First, the nose screams vanilla. Then you get the sweetness plus easily the truest mango flavor of the three, even thinking back to when the Untitled Art was very fresh.
After spending some time with three beers that collectively exemplify exactly the kind of beer Budweiser likes to mock with its Super Bowl ads, a hierarchy was clear. Though it bore the most prominent novelty, the Oliver/Stillwater Whipped Volume 2 was a lackluster milkshake IPA experience. Untitled Art won my eyes and everything else was extremely enjoyable, but The Brewing Projekt -- even with its poor showing on the visual card -- took top marks in every other category.
And as it turns out, you could have gotten those same rankings by looking at the scores on Untappd or Beer Advocate. (Nice to be further validated in my question of homer-ness.) But to pop, pour, and drink each one and come to the conclusion yourself? That, as they say, is why we play the game.